Energy and Power Engineering, 2013, 5, 393-397

doi:10.4236/epe.2013.54B076 Published Online July 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/epe)

Analysis on the Characteristics of Wind Power Output in

Hainan Power Grid*
Jianfeng Wang, Dongmei Zhao
College of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China
Email: wjfwjfcool@126.com

Received March, 2013

ABSTRACT
It is of great importance to study the characteristics of wind power output for the healthy and secure & stable of power
grid. Based on the actual operating data, the probability distribution of the power fluctuations of the wind farm in Hai-
nan and the variation of wind power annual, seasonal, daily active output is analyzed. The study showed that Hainan
Province has obvious seasonal variation of wind power output characteristics, higher levels of output of the year gener-
ally in winter or summer, spring and autumn to contribute small. The average wind power output will contribute to “low
day and high night”, with certain peaking capacity. Shorter time scales, changes in the wind power to smaller amount,
not to bring too much impact on system operation, while a long time fluctuations affect the scheduling and running on
the grid.

Keywords: Wind Power; Power Fluctuation; Probability Distribution

1. Introduction wind farms from 2011 to 2012, variation of wind power

With the growing energy and environmental problems,
the development of new energy has been a concern
around the globe. China has a vast coastline of wind en-
ergy resources are widely distributed and relatively rich
areas are mainly concentrated in the southeast coast and
nearby islands and the northern. In addition, inshore and
offshore wind energy resources are very rich [1].
The new energy is one of the pillar industries in recent
years to focus on supporting the development of Hainan,
Hainan wind power has been rapid development. As of
the end of June this year, Hainan new energy installed
capacity of 249.5 MW wind power project to dominate.
Last year, Hainan wind power generation of 270 million
kWh.
Because of intermittent, randomness and volatility
characteristics of wind, with the rising proportion of
wind power installed capacity proportion in the system,
the impact on security, stability and economic operation
of the power system will cannot be ignored[2,3]. Wind
power output change by a variety of geographical and
climatic factors. Usually only by the statistics and analy-
sis of a large number of actual data, can we get the varia-
tion of the wind power in particular areas. Therefore,
based on the actual operating data of Hainan several
*
The National High Technology Research and Development of China
863 Program (2012AA050201).
annual, seasonal, daily active output is analyzed. Further
with the probability distribution method, the fluctuations
of wind power are quantitative analyzed, as well as the
impact on Hainan power grid.
2. Overview of Wind Power in HAINAN
Hainan Island is located in northern margin of tropical,
with tropical monsoon maritime climate. Winter prevail-
ing northeast monsoon and prevailing southwest mon-
soon in the summer, sometimes blowing southeast mon-
soon and many tropical cyclones occurs. The wind en-
ergy resources which can be developed and used are
mainly distributed in the coastal areas, offshore areas and
some inland mountainous area.
Off the coast of Hainan is rich in wind energy re-
sources, and the average wind speed in most parts is be-
tween 4.3 m/s to5.2 m/s. As of the end of 2012, the Hai-
nan power grid has been put into operation in wind farms
in six, the total installed capacity of 303MW, accounting
for about 7.23% of the installed capacity of Hainan
province. The six grid wind farms are Wenchang wind
farm, E’man wind farm, Gancheng wind farm, Sigeng
wind farm, Gaopai wind farm and Dongfang wind farm,
as shown in Figure 1. The capacity of Dongfang wind
farm is very small, and Gaopai just put into operation in
the end of the year, in this paper, the first four wind farm
will be the research focus.

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394 J. F. WANG, D. M. ZHAO

respectively; Minimum output occurs in August and

September, 14.8 MW and 22.7 MW respectively. The
seasonal maximum peak-to-valley was 68.5 MW and
33.8 MW, accounting for 37.18% and 18.31% of the
wind turbine total installed capacity.
From the wind power output curves in these two years
we can find, generally the largest wind power output
appear in the November, December, January, Under the
influence of the winter monsoon, Hainan have a greater
average wind speed; In the summer, around June, will
also appear larger wind, which is related to the impact of
the monsoon, and tropical cyclones; spring and autumn
Figure 1. Diagram of wind power in Hainan. wind is small generally.
Figure 4 shows annual capacity factor curve in the
3. Wind Power Output Fluctuation Analyses Wenchang, E’man, Gancheng and Sigeng wind farm in
3.1. Output Level under Different Years 2011. The curve shows, in the winter, the output of all
the wind farms have reached the peak level of the year;
Over a period of time, the wind power output level is
constantly in random fluctuations, it is difficult to accu-
rately predict, therefore, need to select an indicator to
study the laws of statistics. Wind power annual utiliza-
tion hours [4], also known as Equivalent full load power
generation hours, Refers to the ratio of the actual gener-
ating capacity of wind power equipment in the year with
annual generating capacity of the power generation
equipment running at rated power. Statistics Hainan wind
farm operating data in the past two years, the annual uti-
lization hours is about 1433 ~ 2340 h, the average value Figure 2. Annual utilization hours in different wind farms.
of 2000h. Annual utilization hours of wind power af-
fected by multiple factors: 1) the impact of meteorologi-
cal factors such as wind conditions, climate, natural dis-
asters, etc; 2) wind turbine failure rate, reliable operation
time of the unit; 3) the transmission, substation capacity
constraints of wind farm area; 4)the electric field losses,
transformer, line losses, and other auxiliary power con-
sumption.
Wind power annual utilization hours can evaluate the
level of efficiency in the use of the wind farm, the level
of annual utilization hours reflect the relative size of the
level of wind speed from the other side in different years.
Figure 2 shows, the average wind speed of each region Figure 3. The total power of the four wind farms in each
in 2012 is basically lower than 2011. month.

3.2. Wind Power in Different Seasons and

Months
The wind speed of an area is largely influenced by the
local climate, wind energy resources of monsoon climate
region shows apparent regularity in the long-term within
the one-year cycle. Active power and capacity factor [5]
was chosen as indicators in the Statistics of the output
data of the Hainan four wind farms in 2011 and 2012.
The results are shown in Figure 3.
In 2011 and 2012, the maximum output occurs in Jan- Figure 4. Annual capacity factor curve in the four wind
uary and June, with the value 83.3MW and 56.5MW farms in 2011.

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 J. F. WANG, D. M. ZHAO 395

in spring and autumn, wind power output is lower; in the cific values. Clearly，wind power capacity factor is basic
summer, different wind farm have different variation. above 0.4 in winter, Indicating that higher utilization
The geographic distance between Gancheng wind farm efficiency in winter; While in spring, for a very long time,
and Sigeng wind farm is very near, at the west of Hainan the wind power capacity factor is less than 0.2.
Island, has a similar law for the wind power output fluc-
tuations. The curves present bimodal characteristics, 4. Probability Distribution of Wind Power
winter and summer wind power output is high, while
4.1. Probability Distribution of Wind Speed
spring and autumn to contribute significantly lower,
which exhibit significant characteristics of the monsoon. The distribution characteristics of wind speed generally
On the other hand, Wenchang and E’man, at the north of shows positive skewness, Weibull distribution [7, 8] is
Hainan, have a different variation rule. In winter, wind generally considered as a suitable probability density
speed and wind power capacity factor are much higher function for the wind speed statistical description. The
than other periods, in spring, summer and autumn wind is Weibull distribution is a single peak distribution function
low, and relatively little change, Curve shows unimodal cluster, which has two parameters. Its probability density
characteristics. function can be expressed as:
kx
k 1
 x k

3.3. Wind Power Output Changes in One Day p( x)    exp      (1)
cc   c  
For power systems, wind power is an uncontrollable
power source, the increase in power output of wind pow- where, k is called the shape parameter, c called the scale
er, means that the system equivalents loads is relatively parameter.
small, and further affect daily open formulation and ad- There are a variety of methods to estimate parameters
justment of the shutdown plan of the power system. of the Weibull distribution, which is chosen depending
Therefore, it is necessary to study wind power output on the wind speed statistics. Three methods are com-
variation in 24 hours. monly used [9]: Least squares method, mean and vari-
With the active output data of wind farms in Hainan in ance estimation method, minimum error approximation
2012 as the foundation, the variation of the capacity fac- method.
tor of each power plant in one day is calculated, as
shown in Figure 5.
It can be found in a wide range of areas in Hainan, the
capacity factor of wind farms in 24 hours with the same
regularity. Wind power output level is low in the night
and the morning, and little change; Afternoon, the wind
power output level is increasing, and the peak generally
appear in the 14:00 to 17:00. We can find that wind
power output of Hainan, which is unlike in inland areas
of significant anti-peaking[6] characteristics presents the
characteristics of “low day and high night” and has cer-
tain support and added effect to peak load regulation in
power system, on the other hand, it is also conducive to Figure 5. Wind power capacity factor in E’man, Gancheng
the elimination of the grid for wind power. In the men- Sigeng and Wenchang wind farm in 24 h.
tioned four wind farm, E’man, Gancheng Sigeng wind
power output shows obvious fluctuations trend in one
day, the peak output level can reach twice of the night,
while power output is more tend to steady in Wenchang,
only a slight increase in the afternoon.
In order to study how the wind farm daily output
curves changes under different seasons, E’man wind
farm is made as an example for analysis on daily output
level in each season, as shown in Figure 6.
E’man wind farms wind power output has almost the
same change trend in different season, showed a single
peak characteristic, which usually appear at 14:00 to
17:00, the affection of the seasonal variation on wind Figure 6. Wind power capacity factor in E’man in each
power output is mainly reflected in the size of the spe- season.

Copyright © 2013 SciRes. EPE

396 J. F. WANG, D. M. ZHAO

According to the statistics of wind speed data in 2012,

combined with the second method, the calculated wind
speed distribution parameters are as follows in Table 1:

4.2. Probability Distribution of Wind Power

Fluctuations
At present, the quantitative analysis of the characteristics
of wind power fluctuations is few，the probability dis-
tribution of the field is also not very mature. The normal
distribution can be used to describe the distribution of the
first-order differential sequence of wind power [10, 11] Figure 7. Distribution of the amplitude of power fluctuation
at different time scales.
proposed an improved t-distribution to describe the min-
ute level power fluctuation. The probability distribution Table 2. Wind power maximum, and standard of the
of the power differential sequence has an important role first-order differential sequence.
to researcher like wind power forecast, wind farms
equivalents modeling and so on, so following this de- Time scale 10s 1min 15min 1h
tailed study: Power fluctuations
0.871 1.875 6.698 6.564
In order to quantify the power fluctuations of the wind maximum (MW)
power, this article refers to two numerical feature Standard deviation
0.145655 0.400795 1.872348 3.588958
amounts to describe the first-order differential sequence (MW)
of wind power. Assuming that P as the wind power of
a wind farm at a certain moment, where P is an At 1min, 15min scale, the probability of the distribu-
n-dimensional vector, n is number of the wind farm tion in 0.01pu is 85.25% and 76.0%, respectively; at
units, the average of wind power is P , and using the 10s-15min scale, the probability of the fluctuations of
standard deviation of wind power output S as quantita- wind power in 0.01pu is almost 100%.
tive indicators to describe the amplitude of the wind With increased sampling time scale, the magnitude of
power fluctuation. the wind power fluctuations increases, the distribution
1 n area of power fluctuations will be more widely. Table 2
S  ( Pi  P )2
n i 1
(2) from the perspective of the active wind power fluctuation
maximum value and the standard deviation, indicating
Assuming that T is to describe the probability of oc- that wind power fluctuations grows with the larger time
currence of the first-order differential sequence of wind scale.
power at different amplitude range [12]. The following In the very small time scale, power fluctuations is a
formula is: smaller amount, does not bring too much impact on the
T  N p / N (3) system operation; However, when the size of the grid-
connected wind power increasing and wind power pe-
where: N p is the number of occurrences of a certain netration is high, which will cannot be ignored. The
range of first-order differential sequence, N is the total short-term fluctuations affect system infrequency modu-
number of wind power differential sequence. lation, and long-term fluctuations have effect on dispatch-
Statistical analysis is to used on Gancheng wind farm ing and operation of power system.
actual operating data of one day in2011，installed ca-
pacity of 49.5 MW. The distribution of the amplitude of 5. Conclusions
power fluctuation at different time scales (10 s, 1 min, 15
Based on Hainan wind farm actual operating data, from
min, 1 h) is shown in Figure 7.
the two aspects of the time scale and the probability den-
Table 1. Wind speed probability distribution parameters in sity distribution, in this paper, the wind power output in
four wind farms. different situations are compared and studied, the con-
clusion is as follows:
Reference average wind
Wind farm
height/m speed/(m/s-1)
c k 1) In Hainan, wind farms are mainly located on the
west coast and Wenchang, belongs to the offshore wind
E’man 65 6.24 6.12 2.01
power; the annual utilization hours is about 1433 ~ 2340 h,
Gancheng 65 6.74 5.99 1.63
the average value of 2000 h, wind energy resources are
Sigeng 65 6.12 6.09 2.01 relatively abundant.
Wenchang 65 6.38 6.14 1.97 2) The output of wind power has obvious seasonal

Copyright © 2013 SciRes. EPE

 J. F. WANG, D. M. ZHAO
variation characteristics: in winter, wind power output is
at the peak, and there is a clear correlation; the output of
spring and fall of each wind farm is low;
3) Unlike inland wind power’s "high day and low
night" feature, each wind farm, in every season, the wind
power output is basically the same, peak generally appear
in the afternoon from 2 o'clock to five o'clock, showed a
single peak characteristics conducive to the system
peaking wind power consumption;
4) Shorter time scales, changes in the wind power to
smaller amount, not to bring too much impact on system
operation, long time fluctuations affect the scheduling
and running on the grid, the need for further research.
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